Defending IoT Devices against Bluetooth Worms with Bluetooth OBEX Proxy

Abstract

The number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices has increased dramatically in recent years, and Bluetooth technology is critical for communication between IoT devices. It is possible to protect electronic communications, the Internet of Things (IoT), and big data from malware and data theft with BlueZ’s Bluetooth File Transfer Filter (BTF). It can use a configurable filter to block unauthorized Bluetooth file transfers. The BTF is available for various Linux distributions and can protect many Bluetooth-enabled devices, including smartphones, tablets, laptops, and the Internet of Things. However, the increased number and density of Bluetooth devices have also created a serious problem—the Bluetooth worm. It poses a severe threat to the security of Bluetooth devices. In this paper, we propose a Bluetooth OBEX Proxy (BOP) to filter malicious files transferred to devices via the OBEX system service in BlueZ. The method described in this article prevents illegal Bluetooth file transfers, defending big data, the Internet of Things (IoT), and electronic communications from malware and data theft. It also protects numerous Bluetooth devices, including smartphones, tablets, laptops, and the Internet of Things, with many Linux distributions. Overall, the detection findings were entirely accurate, with zero false positives and 2.29% misses.

Keywords

• Internet of Things (IoT)
• Bluetooth technology
• IoT device security
• IoT malware
• BlueZ’s OBEX service daemon